Letters

Contact us via voice mail at (714) 825-8432, or by e-mail: letters@ocweekly.com. Or write to Letters to the Editor, OC Weekly, P.O. Box 10788, Costa Mesa, CA 92627. Or fax: (714) 708-8410. Letters may be edited for clarity and length. All correspondence must include your home city or service provider and a daytime phone number.

HATES JEWS

I read your article about Jan and Paul Crouch during the Christmas season (Rebecca Schoenkopf's "God's Big Inning," Dec. 31). I didn't appreciate your negative point of view. I understand you are coming from a Generation-X point of view. Maybe you would prefer writing an article about Hanukkah? What you said was like Scrooge. It won't be tolerated. Basically Christmas is a wonderful, wonderful holiday. And it should be respected and treated as so.

Also, I would like to tell you that Jan and Paul Crouch are not what you had said they were at all. They are Good Samaritans; they help a lot of people. They have accepted Christ as their savior—something you probably have not done. There is nothing wrong with what they are doing. I admit Jan wears a little bit of heavy makeup. She's a little bit hard to take, as for her whipped-cream personality, but you've got to look at what she's doing. She's going around the world, her and her husband, and they have helped many, many people. Now, can you ask yourself one question: Have you ever done anything for anyone else, in the way that they have? Ask yourself that.

Anonymous via voice mail

HATES GUNS

What's with you guys? In one issue, you've got a picture of some music-geek tough guy posing like Mickey Rourke and brandishing a gun ("Aural Reports," Feb. 4). A fucking gun! I searched the story in vain for some higher purpose for the presence of the gun but could find none. Then, in the Feb. 18 issue, you've got the first-person account of a woman contemplating "sticking my gun in your mouth until you forked over whatever money you keep in your expensive-looking riding suit" ("Hey, You"). What's happened?

I read recently that the Weekly was purchased for some millions of dollars. Was Charlton Heston involved in the takeover?

Sue Halder via e-mail

HATE AIRPORTS

Congratulations on the regular El Toro Airport Watch updates (I noted that the Times unfairly stole your former column title "El Toro Watch" for their Feb. 14 article "Battle of Ads"). No one in the journalistic community in Orange County researches the facts surrounding the county's El Toro airport "planning" process and presents them more accurately than Anthony Pignataro. On top of that, his columns are extremely well-written and pack a lot of punch. I would hate to see him write for the other side!

Achim Krauss Foothill Ranch

Thanks for the continuing barrage of good perspectives on El Toro. The quality of life most of us have come to Orange County to enjoy is on the verge of being forever destroyed by our own county government—our air, our water, our parks and lakes, our homes, schools and businesses all stand to suffer if El Toro International Airport is built. A lot of us feel very disenfranchised by our county government and by the various media. The OC Weekly is a breath of fresh air: you give us at least one public voice, a voice we very badly need. Please keep up the good work!

Michael E. Smith Mission Viejo

HATE CRITICISM

Just as I figured he would, reviewer Dave Barton blasted Volcano. Barton's review shows his ignorance of the time and culture. It's no joking matter to me and to many African-Americans who grew up in the 1960s and were actually confronted with the prejudice outlined in the play. I was born in 1959 in Greenville, Alabama —that's 30 miles south of Montgomery, one of the hot spots of the civil-rights movement. So I know for a fact that the things in the play he seems to take for granted or think are not plausible are in fact truthful situations. The Korean War is not an "after-school special" takeoff—for many who share the generation in which I grew up, this was the war of our fathers. Yes, it is true that if you were black and serving in this war, as long as you were on foreign soil, you were treated equal, but when you returned home to your native land, America, you were a second-class citizen, only fit to work in the cotton, bean, corn and potato fields of what were once called plantations. The play is really about hidden prejudice, where everything is fine until the situation gets too close to home. I once dated a Jewish girl, and when her grandparents heard about her dating an African-American, they disowned her; in high school (Green Bay, Wisconsin), a friend of mine became friends with a white female classmate, and that was fine and dandy with her family until they started calling themselves boyfriend and girlfriend.

Now let's bring the situation closer to home, since it seems Mr. Barton is very limited in worldly experience. Every time I go into the local bank in my neighborhood in Irvine, this one teller who only seems to open her station when I go into the bank treats me like a suspected criminal; if I happen to get lucky and go to another teller, she intercepts the transaction to look it over. My wife, who is Danish (that's as white as they come), goes into the bank (without me) and to the same teller and gets treated like a queen; hell, the lady even laughs and jokes with her and the kids.